Word: numb
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...days one Vera Stone, 18, Tennessee girl, hiccoughed. She acked, eked, icked, ooked, ucked until she nearly died. Her diaphragm jerked until it ached and her arms and hands went numb. Doctors at Ripley, her home, and Memphis, where she was hospitalized, sought causes-irritation of the stomach's mucous membranes, affection of the phrenic (diaphragm) nerve, peritonitis, sleeping sickness (encephalitis lethargica), methyl chloride escaping from a mechanical refrigerator. None of these were causative. They made her gulp cold water and hold her breath. That usually stops hiccoughs, but not Vera Stone...
...will cause some shrugging of shoulders, some sharper comment. Those who question the taste of such autobiography forget, possibly, that the world left him poor while he was creating some of its richest musical treasure; that publishers kept him whistling in the outer offices with immortal compositions grasped in numb fingers; that critics derided when first he wore his heart on his sleeve; that such experiences leave strange marks on sensitive natures...
...half hours six strapping men stood on the coffin lid, held it at the bottom of the pool until Mr. Houdini telephoned that he was getting numb. Extricated, too weak to move, he explained that he had conserved his air supply by taking little breaths. His comparative conditions were as follows...
...commanding principle. This principle is reality. We are trying to avoid vain repetitions, the use of archiac words or phrases which, to the ordinary layman, mean either nothing or something untrue, and such length of prayer or praise in any one part of any service that the mind becomes numb and the worship ' of the heart ceases...
...Egyptian Karnak and our own Gimp. For five centuries countless generations of poor scholars wore down the hollowed steps from their pristine rectangularity and looked out upon the Arctic winter from their dim cells, while fierce storms shattered the leaded casements and necessitated hurried and unskilful repairs by the numb hands of the student plumbers...